Open Data

In the week of a major international summit on government transparency in London, the Open Knowledge Foundation has published its 2013 Open Data Index, showing that governments are still not providing enough information in an accessible form to their citizens and businesses.

The UK and USA top the 2013 Index, which was compiled from community-based surveys in 70 countries. They are followed by Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. Of the countries assessed, Cyprus, St Kitts & Nevis, the British Virgin Islands, Kenya and Burkina Faso ranked lowest. There are many countries where the governments are less open but that were not assessed because of lack of openness or a sufficiently engaged civil society. This includes 30 countries who are members of the Open Government Partnership.

The Index ranks countries based on the availability and accessibility of information in ten key areas, including government spending, election results, transport timetables, and pollution levels, and reveals that whilst some good progress is being made, much remains to be done.

Rufus Pollock, the Open Knowledge Foundation’s CEO said: “Opening up government data drives democracy, accountability and innovation. It enables citizens to know and exercise their rights, and it brings benefits across society: from transport, to education and health. There has been a welcome increase in support for open data from governments in the last few years, but this index reveals that too much valuable information is still unavailable.”

However, even open data leaders such as the UK and USA have room for improvement: for example, the USA does not provide a single consolidated and open register of corporations, whilst the UK Electoral Commission lets down the UK’s good overall performance by not allowing open reuse of UK election data.

Furthermore, there is a very disappointing degree of openness of company registers across the board: only 5 out of the 20 leading countries have even basic information available via a truly open licence and only 10 allow any form of bulk download. This information is critical for range of reasons, including tackling tax evasion and other forms of financial crime and corruption.

Under half of the key datasets in the top 20 countries are available to re-use as open data, showing that even the leading countries do not fully understand the importance of citizens and businesses being able to use, reuse and redistribute data legally and technically. This enables them to build and share commercial and non-commercial services.

The official geodata of the Berlin Land Surveying Administration are now available free of charge, Heise reports. The data, such as the automated property register map, topographical official map series, aerial photographs and rectified digital photographs derived from these and information about standard land values, may be used for any commercial or non-commercial purpose according to a notice from Berlin’s Senate Administration for City Development & the Environment. The data can be acquired from the geodata portal.

The previous complex terms of use have been abolished and replaced by new uniform terms of use, which permit commercial and non-commercial use of the data free of charge. Modest charges are levied for the provision of data that can only be made available offline. Fees are still charged for official information and extracts from the land register, as well as for permits and certifications.

“Social topics relevant to the future such as climate, energy, mobility or demography are dependent on geodata. Berlin’s implementation of its open data initiative is being continued with the release of official geodata and an important contribution being made to the continuing opening up of the State,” explains Ephraim Gothe, State Secretary for Urban Development and the Environment.

Mathias Schindler of Wikimedia Deutschland sees the move as a small revolution. “In particular, the (meta)data may be copied, printed out, used in presentations, processed and passed on to third parties, merged with one’s own or others’ data, associated with independent data sets and integrated in internal and external business processes and applications in public and non-public electronic networks – all with a source attribution obligation”, he explains in a blog post.

The Berlin Senate published its open data strategy in February 2012. It set up its open data portal – the first in Germany in April 2012.

The French Prime Minister has just distributed a circular promoting the opening up of public data, according to Le Monde Informatique. This was accompanied by a practical guide to assist public sector organisations in joining in this move.

The “Vade-mecum sur l’ouverture et le partage des données publiques” (= Handbook on opening up and sharing public data) was published on 17th September 2013 by the Prime Minister’s office. Originating from the CIMAP (inter-ministerial committee for public [sector] activity modernisation) meeting of 2nd April 2013, the handbook has the aim of encouraging the public sector to open up their data fully by encouraging it to do so. At just 11 pages, the document is very short. It is also based on a provision in the ethical charter signed by each minister of the present French government upon entering office and which makes provision for opening up the data of each ministry as fully as possible.
It also gives a reminder that open data should be referred to on the data.gouv.fr portal. This portal currently hosts 350,000 files according to the Prime Minister’s office.

After having given a reminder of the issues and objective of opening up public data, the handbook sets out the legal forms for so doing, along with the methods and good practice. It concludes by setting out possible examples of the re-use of open public data.

The Swiss Federal Government launched its open data portal opendata.admin.ch comprising over 1,600 public data sets, including election results, key figures for cantons and local authorities, as well as demographic information and data at the start of the Open Knowledge Conference 2013 in Geneva, the German technology news site Heise reports. The portal will provide a central point of access for the open data portfolio in Switzerland. The website already features the first applications based on the data made available.

Open Data currently ranks fairly high up the Swiss political agenda: last week the National Council called for a master plan for open government from the Swiss Federal Council. The Swiss Federal Council in turn announced the development of a national open data strategy by 2014, which, amongst other things, should clear the way for the repeal of restrictive usage rights, as well as the abolition of fees on public data.

Reposted from Bristol Wireless.

The British National Archives announced last week that it has released version 2.0 of the Open Government Licence (OGL) following consultation on how the licence could be developed further to reflect new and emerging thinking on the licensing of public sector information.

The OGL is an open licence allowing information to be used and re-used with virtually no restrictions. It is also part of the UK Government Licensing Framework (UKGLF), which was launched in 2010. A wide range of government and other public sector information can be used and re-used under the OGL, which also forms part of the UK government’s policy on transparency and open data.

The basic terms and conditions of the Open Government Licence version 2.0 remain the same as the previous version in that it continues to:

• permit use and re-use of information in any format for both commercial and non-commercial purposes without charge;
• require re-users to publish an acknowledgment of the source of the information;
• exclude personal information from the licence;
• be compatible with other licensing models, such as Creative Commons, and conforms to the Open Definition*.

What has changed is that National Archives have introduced a separate section of the licence headed ‘Non-endorsement’. This is designed to make it clear that the licence does not permit the re-user to suggest that their versions of the information enjoy any official status or have departmental endorsement.

The National Archives is also introducing the OGL symbol, a simple way of identifying when information can be used and re-used under the terms of the Open Government Licence. The OGL symbol was developed by The National Archives with help from the Government Digital Service. The OGL symbol, at a glance, shows that information can be used and re-used under open licensing.

* The definition seeks to define the terms “open”, “open data” and “open content” precisely in the context of data and content so as to ensure “interoperability between different pools of open material.”

Yesterday, in the final stage of the EU approval process, the European Parliament formally adopted updated EU rules on the re-use of public sector information.

The Council of Ministers had already agreed to the new rules at last week’s Telecoms Council.

European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes said: “Today we can celebrate our efforts to bring government data closer to citizens and businesses in Europe. We are finally getting the much needed legal framework to boost the economy and create new jobs.”

After this final endorsement, the Commission will start developing a series of guidelines on the most relevant elements addressed in the Directive, such as licensing, datasets and charging arrangements (it’s public sector information produced with taxpayers’ money; it should be available free of charge. Ed.).

Member States will have 24 months from the date of entry into force of the revised Directive to implement it in domestic legislation. Once fully implemented, the Directive will boost the data market in Europe by making all the generally accessible public sector information available for re-use. Developers, programmers, creative citizens and businesses will be able to get and re-use public sector data at zero or very low cost in most cases. Prospective users will also have access to more exciting and interesting content since materials in national museums, libraries and archives now fall under the scope of the Directive.

Neelie Croes has also written a post on this topic on her blog.